Methane, She Pinkie

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 5: the Caretaker

The ship proximity alarm woke Tinat up.

The natives, as Tinat had observed, tended to be active during the bright periods- much less so in the dark, with a few exceptions. Like autrenkt, they slept, though they spent only one-third of their cycle asleep as opposed to his people's almost even split between wakefulness and rest. They stayed awake for six Konsorian hours, as he did... but then he slept for almost six Konsorian hours, as opposed to their three. Long story short, his wake-sleep cycle didn't line up with the planetary rotation at all, so while the environment outside his ship was hellishly bright as usual, he'd been blissfully unconscious of it for once.

Truth be told, he'd been shorting his sleep as it was, and between that and the pink native, he was beginning to feel a bit boiled. He'd only got to sleep about an hour before, thanks to a prolonged argument with the mission navigator back on the mothership. The navigator was going planetic over the apparently erratic movement of the hell-planet's moon and its irregular rotation in respect to its primary, and he had threatened to have Tinat recalled to take over the astronomical observations. The call had only ended when the planet and moon twitched again, and the world outside his tinted window blazed with light, and the navigator had lost the capacity for coherent resonance.

Recall. As if! Leaving aside his contacts with the pink one (which he'd dutifully reported to the captain, and which the captain had reprimanded him for), his observations of the village below had yielded vast insights into possibly the most alien civilization any autrenkt could have even imagined, much less encountered. In the brief time he'd been here he'd gained material for centuries of research by sociologists back on Konsor. It was incredble how such a different species, in such a different environment, could have so many familiar features to its culture!

And the biologists would be working on what he already had for millennia. Why, just yesterday (as the natives called it) he'd discovered things living in the river of liquid ice! Plants, animals, a vast array of microorganisms- a fully functioning biota. Considering how the land flora and fauna had such a high proportion of water in their cells, it didn't stretch the imagination to suppose that, just as Konsorian life had first arisen in hot spots within its hydrocarbon lakes, so life on this world had arisen somewhere in its liquid-ice depths. How that could happen in an environment composed of the universe's most common solvent, on the other grip? That would fuel speculation long after Tinat's grandspawn returned to the oils.

What with one amazing and terrifying discovery after another, Tinat had stretched his waking time and shortened his cooling-down periods. Later, In his final report, he would cite this as explanation for his state of mind when he clambered out of his bunk, looked at the monitors, and saw the very large creature approaching the ship.

Its mouthparts were enormous, as were the slashing claws at the end of its limbs. Rearing up on its hind limbs, it could stand almost as tall as Tinat's ship. And yet this fearsome creature, which in Tinat's mind must be the apex predator of this entire planet, hesitated after stepping through the short sessile flora. It turned to look behind it, grunting something at another creature pushing through the plant life.

That creature was another native.

It was partly pink- the fibers on its head and tail, at least- but most of it was a yellow scarcely less brilliant than the planet's star. And, also unlike Pinkie Pie, this one was of the flying subspecies, though her wings stayed tightly curled against her sides at all times. Other, smaller creatures followed in her wake, including several of the ones Tinat had taken tissue samples from. A couple of them reared onto their hind legs and pointed at the drone observing all of this, then at the ship.

Tinat watched the newcomer look at the ship, saw the eyes go wide with obvious fear. It tried to scurry back, but the smaller creatures blocked her, and the gigantic predator reached one of its immense paws behind her and gently but firmly shoved her forwards.

Tinat's perfuser sank. As if, indeed. There was no way this native wouldn't bring trouble. No matter how much remained to be done, it was time to leave.

He rushed to the control room, mounted the flight seat, and began the emergency pre-flight sequence. Immediately the safety interlocks popped up: Lifeforms within danger zone of vessel. Clear area prior to launch.

A faint susurrus barely managed to resonate through the ship. In a somewhat louder tone, the computer's translator said, "H-h-h-hello? Is s-someone there?"

One of the reasons Tinat later pled short sleep and overheated brain in his report was how he answered the new native: "No! Go away!"

A moment later he realized how stupid that was, and how unlikely it was to make anyone or anything go away. A native second later, the newcomer confirmed this. "Oh, I'm sorry, Maybe I'll just come back later- ow! Please stop pushing!" The other animals were practically carrying the yellow one to the ship at this point. "I really am sorry about this," she added, "but it won't take but a minute. If you don't mind. Please."

Tinat sighed and left the flight seat, moving to the laboratory and its observation window. "What is it?" he asked. "Did the pink one send you?"

"No," the newcomer said quickly. "I haven't spoken to Pinkie Pie all this week." Tinat felt surprise that this newcomer wasn't surprised that he knew Pinkie Pie. "Should I have? I really am sorry, if I'm intruding, I'll just-" A clang rang through the ship as the creatures more or less tossed the native up onto the hull next to the observation window and its speaker. "Eep! I'm sorry!"

"It doesn't matter," Tinat said. "Please move the creatures out of this clearing. It is dangerous for them to stay here."

"Actually, that's what I need to talk to you- ooooh my!" Tinat flinched as the native looked through the tinted window and saw him. "I've never seen anyone like you before! And such an interesting body plan you have! A wide, flat body, with eyes that rise above everything- is that an air intake between them? You must have been an ambush predator in some sort of liquid-ice environment, like (untranslatable)s and (untranslatable)s!"

"Er... are you a scientist?" Tinat asked. The creature had lost all appearance of fear. actually stepping right up to the tinted glass to stare at him. She'd been close to the mark- the autrenkts' ancestors of some forty million years before had been just the kind of predator she described, grabbing prey and drowning them.

"Oh, no," the native said. "I'm an animal caretaker." She blinked, then continued, "Actually that's why I'm here. The animals who live in these trees are unhappy because they keep getting poked and bit by strange metal things. Do you know anything about that?"

"I promise," Tinat replied, "that will stop immediately. In fact, I'll leave right away, so your creatures won't be bothered any more."

"Oh, that isn't necessary," the native said. "You're welcome to stay as long as you like, but please don't bother my friends any more."

Tinat sighed. Even with the translation nearly perfect, there was still some sort of communications disconnect. "I have to leave," he said. "I'm supposed to leave if I encounter any natives at all. I told your Pinkie Pie that I would have to leave if any more of you showed up. Now I have to."

"Oh, that's a shame," the native said, her eyes dropping. "I was hoping to learn more about you."

"Believe me, you have no idea how much I feel the same way," Tinat said. "But I just can't. Now please move your friends out of the clearing so my ship can take off."

"Okay," the yellow one sighed, turning to step off the ship's hull.

And for reasons which, again, Tinat would put down to a cooked brain, he added, "And tell the pink one that I'm sorry she never got to have that celebration for me."

The yellow one froze just before dropping to the ground. For the first time her wings spread. "What?" she asked. "You mean Pinkie was going to throw you a party?"

"Yes, well, I told her it was impossible," Tinat mumbled. "She can't come in here, I can't go out there, I can't eat anything you natives eat, nor the other way-"

Tinat never saw the yellow one move. One moment her back was to him, and the next she was right next to the window. Those huge eyes, which had shown him trepidation and curiosity, now slammed into his with righteous fury.

"You're skipping out on a party my friend is planning just for you?" the glaring eyes said.

---

Rainbow Dash's fidgeting ceased the moment she saw Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie at the bottom of the hill, each with a double set of saddlebags. She'd been torn between going to find them and going into the copse of trees without them. Now she didn't have to choose, and in an instant she dropped out of the skies to hover in front of them. "Where have you been??" she asked the two of them.

"Waiting on the morning train from Canterlot," Twilight replied. "The only way Princess Celestia could get us the ingredients faster would have been for her to fly them herself."

"And that would have super-duper broken my promise," Pinkie added. "I wasn't supposed to tell anypony, and if the tippy-TOP pony-"

"Yeah, yeah, not important," Rainbow Dash snapped. "Fluttershy and a bunch of her animals went into those trees ten minutes ago!!"

Pinkie's pink went pale. "Oh no!!" She broke into a gallop, rushing up the hill at speeds Rainbow Dash could only surpass with difficulty and the risk of property damage.

Twilight Sparkle shouted, "Pinkie! That's glassware in- oh, never mind." With a flash of magic she went from the bottom of the hill to the top, and with another flash of magic she snared Pinkie Pie's saddlebags and levitated them gently up.

Being last anyplace was an uncommon experience for Dash, and she didn't like it. "Well," she said grumpily, "if the secret's out, we may as well go in, right?"

Pinkie paused at the edge of the copse. "Dashie," she said solemnly, "maybe the secret is out, but I still promised. Please stay out here, okay?"

"We will," Twilight said. "I hope everything works out all right."

All four pairs of saddlebags gently came to rest on Pinkie's back, and without another word she stepped into the trees and through the holographic projections of bushes and undergrowth.

Tinat's ship was still there, and Pinkie's stomach unknotted just a little.

Then she saw Fluttershy perched on the ship next to that window, and it knotted back up.

And then she got close enough to hear what Fluttershy was saying, and GOODNESS but she sounded angry.

"... you say that filly has been visiting you every day, and you think you're going to just disappear without even the common courtesy of telling her goodbye? Is that good manners in whatever ecosystem you come from, mister? Because let me tell you, it certainly isn't around here! Even the most boorish pony would be ashamed right down to their hooves for using someone so poorly!"

Pinkie's stomach couldn't decide whether to relax or implode. It settled for doing a few somersaults.

The critters waiting at the base of the ship parted to let Pinkie through, and with a little difficulty she got up onto the hull next to Fluttershy, who was still giving Tinat an economy-sized piece of her mind, accompanied by a Stare strong enough that Pinkie, who wasn't the target, found herself flinching. She reached a hoof up to pat Fluttershy's shoulder and said, "Um, thanks, Fluttershy, but I got this now, 'kay?"

Fluttershy blinked, and through the dark glass Pinkie could see the purple alien suddenly slump on its legs, its broad body rocking back and forth as if about to fall over. "Oh, hello, Pinkie," Fluttershy said, her quiet rage vanishing from her tone. "We were just talking about you. I hope you don't mind."

"Pinkie Pie!" The alien's voice through the loudspeaker sounded terribly shaken. "Thank goodness you're here! Could you please ask your friend to get off the ship so I can leave?"

"So you can leave?" Pinkie's jaw waggled for a moment as she tried to think of what to say. Fortunately, she never took long to find her voice. "But I just got here! And anyway, I never told Fluttershy about you! So you've got no reason to go, right?"

"Pinkie Pie," Tinat replied, his eyestalks drooping, "I told you I would have to leave if any more of your kind came here. Whether or not you told them." The speaker gave off a simulated sigh. "I appreciate your not telling anyone, and keeping the blue one and that purple one away. But if I don't leave right now I'm going to be in very big trouble."

"He was going to leave," Fluttershy said, a little anger returning to her voice, "without even saying goodbye."

Through the glass, Pinkie could see Tinat slap his body with his claw-hands. "Do you natives even have the concept of orders?" he wailed. "Laws? Any of that? I have to leave!!"

"Why?" Pinkie asked simply.

"Because," Tinat replied, "we've met natives before. And it has always ended with our scientists being attacked and driven away. Always. So for everyone's safety we have a rule; if the natives find us, we leave."

"But you come back, don't you?"

"Sometimes. Much later, after the natives calm down. But not here." Tinat had calmed down a little, but he still looked a bit wobbly, and one of his eyestalks wouldn't quite rise level with the other. "All the other worlds were normal ones like my home- not burning hot places like this."

"Hot? It's only midway through spring," Fluttershy said.

"He likes it super-duper cold," Pinkie hissed in an aside. "I'll explain later."

"With the other worlds there is a possibility that we can interact with the natives," Tinat said. "Or they may build spaceships someday and find our worlds. We need to study them. But your world and mine are just too different. We can never interact any closer than this." One eyestalk lowered and the other rose. "I was only sent here from scientific curiosity. Once I'm gone, we will have no reason to return."

"Oh," Fluttershy said quietly. "That's so sad."

"You're sad?" Tinat said. "My mission was supposed to be (time reference)." He paused, blinked, and then the other voice, the one that Pinkie Pie had learned wasn't the alien, put in, "Four hundred ninety-one native hours."

"Four hundred ninety... um, how many days is that?" Fluttershy asked.

Pinkie Pie and the second voice answered at the same time, "Twenty days."

"Anyway, I'd just barely begun cataloguing your world's life," Tinat said. "And now if I want to ever be allowed in space again after this, I need to leave right this (sixty-seven seconds)!"

"No you don't," Pinkie Pie said, having finally thought up the solution.

"I really do!"

"You really don't!" Pinkie insisted. "Look, you can't take off while we're here because the flames from your rockets will burn us to a crisp, right?"

"Um... no..." Tinat's eyestalks wobbled. "My ship doesn't make flames." After a beat, the speaker let out a rapid-fire mutter: "I only hope it doesn't make flames..." Then, in a more normal voice, he said, "But the against-gravity field it uses will crush anything above ground as if the ship were sitting on it. So it's not safe for you to be near the ship when I take off." Another mutter: "Saying nothing about standing on the ship..."

"So, so long as I insist on sitting here," and Pinkie plunked her posterior on the cold metal hull plating to make her point, "you can't take off, right?"

"That's what I've been trying to tell both of you for-"

"Which means it's totally not your fault that you can't leave, right?"

Tinat froze. He eyestalks now came fully upright again.

"Which means," Pinkie Pie said, "you can stay for my party!"

Tinat's eyestalks drooped again. "But I can't eat any of your-"

Pinkie Pie reached back into the saddlebags and began pulling out large flasks with lids on. Some were large, some were small, but the key thing was, they all held liquids, running from almost clear yellow down to a deep brown.

"This," Pinkie Pie said, holding up one sample flask, "this is refined kerosene. No oxygen in it at all." Another small flask. "This is sunflower oil. Mostly made of triglycerides. A little oxygen, but not as high a percentage as alcohol." Another flask, and another. "This is olive oil, and this is peanut oil." One more flask came up, not with a liquid, but a white solid subtstance. "And this is hydrogenated coconut oil, like what we use for shortening when we bake."

Pinkie felt the deep resonance through the ship. "Triglycerides," Tinat's voice murmured through the speakers.

"Yep! But that's not all!" Setting these aside, Pinkie brought out a small wooden rack with stoppered test tubes already inside. She pointed from one to the next, naming them off: "These are pure flavorings, some natural, some artificial. Vanillin- apparently that has a bit of oxygen in it, so you may have to be careful, but it makes things sweet. Acetoin- it's what makes butter buttery! Also some oxygen, but less than vanillin. "Isoamyl acetate- what my granny called banana oil, 'cause it makes things taste like bananas. And its cousin, octyl acetate, which makes things orangy. And this is limonene, which you get from lemon peel, and it doesn't have any oxygen in it at all! And cinnamaldehyde, my favorite after vanillin!"

"Triglycerides," Tinat repeated.

"You betcha!" Pinkie said. "Now, these flavorings, well, a little goes a loooooong way, so I only used a tiny bit, but each of these-" she gestured at the larger flasks, which each had its own label- "each of these has one or two of these mixed in with one or another of the oils, right? And all this glassware is chem-lab stuff! You can put liquid nitrogen in and it won't break, or so I'm told! So it should be just fine in your ship!"

"Er... yes," Tinat agreed weakly, "Liquid nitrogen is cold even for me."

"So let's get your samples from these," and Pinkie pointed at the small flasks, "and then once we know what you can and can't eat out of them, you can try your treats while we're eating ours!"

"Er... but what will my leader say?"

"Tell him you're being held hostage until you have a party!"

Tinat slumped. "I'm supposed to tell my leader that some natives are holding me hostage until I get so intoxicated that I fall down?" he asked. "That's what pure triglycerides do to us."

Pinkie looked at Fluttershy. "Do you think Applejack would bring some cider if we asked?" she said. "We should probably ask her for some pies and things anyway. I only brought enough pony snacks for me and one other."

"I'm sure she wouldn't mind," Fluttershy said. "But wouldn't that be imposing on your friend here?"

"Good point." Pinkie turned to Tinat. "Since you're leaving after the party anyway," she said, "is there any reason my friends can't join us?"

"My hostage-taker is asking me permission to bring people in," Tinat replied. The speaker managed a very dry tone of voice for a machine. "How will that sound to my leader?"

"Well, if he gets upset, your leader can ask my leader," Pinkie said. "Twilight, that is. She's a princess, she's my friend, and she's right outside the woods. You can let her talk to him if you like."

The alien paused. "You know," he said at last, "I'm tired, I'm upset, and I very much want to get intoxicated right now. Go ahead. Take your leader to me."

Comments

[TCC56]

"Take your leader to me."

Priceless.

[Scyphi]

"You're skipping out on a party my friend is planning just for you?" the glaring eyes said.

Well, that settles that then.

"Take your leader to me."

You got that a little backwards, Tinat, but we'll just associate that with your general lack of sleep.

[Venerable Ro]

When in doubt, booze your problems away.

[River Babble]

OH NO HE GOT THE STARE XD

"I'm tired, I'm upset, and I very much want to get intoxicated right now." This poor guy I feel so sorry for him but also so proud of Pinkie's solution.

[Eroraf86]

The alien paused. "You know," he said at last, "I'm tired, I'm upset, and I very much want to get intoxicated right now. Go ahead. Take your leader to me."

This is amazing.

[Black--Soul]

The alien paused. "You know," he said at last, "I'm tired, I'm upset, and I very much want to get intoxicated right now. Go ahead. Take your leader to me."

I fucking lost it 👍!!!
Really laughing my ass off! Glorious ♡

[Bugsydor]

That last line was amazing.

Also, a short video clip of Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie should be sufficient excuse for most anything here.

[EatenbyaGrue]

The alien paused. "You know," he said at last, "I'm tired, I'm upset, and I very much want to get intoxicated right now. Go ahead. Take your leader to me."

Well, at the very least, "their leader" will know exactly how he feel:
static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/confound_these_ponies_they_drive_me_to_drink_3889.jpg

[darklight731]

Poor guy is completely done with this bullcrap.
At least he can get drunk.

[Bicyclette]

It was incredble how such a different species, in such a different environment, could have so many familiar features to its culture!

really makes you think about convergent evolution

"Actually, that's what I need to talk to you- ooooh my!" Tinat flinched as the native looked through the tinted window and saw him. "I've never seen anyone like you before! And such an interesting body plan you have! A wide, flat body, with eyes that rise above everything- is that an air intake between them? You must have been an ambush predator in some sort of liquid-ice environment, like (untranslatable)s and (untranslatable)s!"

augh, love Fluttershy

"You're skipping out on a party my friend is planning just for you?" the glaring eyes said.

aww, the other side of Fluttershy!

Pinkie Pie and the second voice answered at the same time, "Twenty days."

ahaha, love savant Pinkie

The alien paused. "You know," he said at last, "I'm tired, I'm upset, and I very much want to get intoxicated right now. Go ahead. Take your leader to me."

love the inversion of the classic alien phrase

[Thought Prism]

Its mouthparts were enormous, as were the slashing claws at the end of its limbs. Rearing up on its hind limbs, it could stand almost as tall as Tinat's ship. And yet this fearsome creature, which in Tinat's mind must be the apex predator of this entire planet, hesitated after stepping through the short sessile flora. It turned to look behind it, grunting something at another creature pushing through the plant life.

Let's hope he never meets Torch, lmao.